Novel underlays manufactured from carpet waste material.

Currently a large proportion of carpet waste destined for landfill is made up of pre-consumer or process waste in the form of selvedge edging, mismatches and substandard and faulty carpets. In Europe, these types of waste account for 1.6 million tonnes of all waste dumped into landfill. In the UK alone, 90% of all fibrous wastes are carpet-related waste and in the Northwest, where land is particularly scarce, there are only four years of licensed landfill space available. There is therefore an urgent need to address waste dumping in general and carpet waste in particular. This work reports on converting carpet waste direct into durable underlays using co-polymer mixtures and high temperature curing. The novel underlay is then tested and compared with three commercially available underlays of similar physical characteristics according to British Standard routines. The testing protocol includes cracking /breaking, dynamic loading, breaking strength and elongation as well as tear strength. The novel underlay is subsequently assessed and further optimisations are carried out with respect to waste particle size, underlay thickness and resin compositio